Sunday Morning Meditation, January 25th

David Oromith

Good morning everyone. A joy to see you all. Thank you all for coming along. So I think let us begin as we usually do, going straight into meditation, then our talk, and then our discussion.

Meditation

So please find a comfortable posture and we can begin our practice.

So just taking a moment first of all to get comfortable.

And beginning the practice by bringing to mind your most meaningful motivation.

And then dropping our awareness down into the felt experience of the body.

First of all, bringing our attention right down to where our body meets the ground, through our cushion, chair, floor, wherever we are.

And then becoming aware of the sensations throughout the body, welcoming everything equally.

With each inbreath. Allow yourself, if you are sitting, to sit up just a little bit taller.

And with each outbreath then softening and relaxing, finding a balance between the two. Increasing that sense of alertness, vigilance with every inbreath and then countering any excessive tightness with the outbreath as you relax and soften.

And really allowing yourself to release the tension from the top down.

So any tension that you find throughout the face and the head, there is any tightening in the forehead, the eyebrows, the clenching of the jaws, loosening around the neck and the shoulders, arms in the hands and all the way down through the body.

And then just bringing attention to any felt recent emotion or mood. Perhaps if there has been some anxiety or fear recently, or something challenging; you might notice that there’s still some resonance in the body: tightening or swirling heaviness.

And so if there is something uncomfortable, then just bringing attention to that, allowing yourself to soften and open up around it.

And if there’s any resonance of a pleasant emotion or mood and simply resting with that, opening into that.

And, of course, giving special permission for your mind to settle and relax as well, to ease into this moment right here. This moment right here in which you have no burdens, no tasks, no thing to worry about, nothing to plan or organise.

This is your time to set all of that aside.

And so for the moment, simply be aware of your experience of your body. The sensations are rising and passing, moment to moment.

That experience of being embodied, of being alive. The many processes ticking away.

And seeing if you can be with the tactile experience in a way that is open, spacious, non reactive.

So if there are sensations that feel a bit more uncomfortable, seeing if you can, rather than tightening around that tensing, see if you can soften: be more open, release.

So just letting there be the sense of acceptance and peace around the experience of your body where everything is exactly as it should be.

Then let us open up to the experience of sound. What sounds are you aware of? A rising and passing here and now.

Really tuning in to your experience of hearing not only the more obvious sounds, the sounds closer, but perhaps those that are further. Those that are quieter.

And see if you can attend to the experience of sound in the same way. In this way that is open, spacious, non reactive, welcoming each and every sound in the same way: without any resistance or grasping, reaching out.

Can there be here, too, this sense of acceptance and peace around your experience of sound, your experience of hearing, where everything is exactly as it should be, without a sense of wanting to change it, or wanting it to be different?

How about turning to your mental experience, the objects of attention that are purely mental: thoughts, images, desires, memories. Sure, all sorts of mental activities have been arising and passing during this practice so far. Can you step back from being caught right in the middle of it to simply observing it? Observing the movements of the mind in the same way? Open, spacious, non reactive.

Crucially, not getting involved. Not wanting it to be different, not wanting to change anything, whatever’s coming up, welcoming it equally.

It’s part of the experience of having a mind.

So whether the mind feels a bit more busy, active, quick. Whether it feels more dull, sluggish. Whether you find the contents to be pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Can there be again the sense of acceptance and peace around the experience of your mind? That it is exactly how it should be right now.

As you passively observe or witness the movements of your mind.

And so just letting your attention now move freely among the objects of immediate experience. Always hovering in the present moment with just this of openness, spaciousness, acceptance and peace around what is.

Releasing any sense of a need to control, change or manipulate. Just the sense of welcoming. The sense of presence.

Teachings

So I thought perhaps something that could be helpful to think about often and remind ourselves, is learning to distinguish between what, of course, Buddhists call love and what we call attachment, especially in relation to our closest relationships. This is one of those kind of really, sticky, tricky aspects of attachment, more ingrained, more subtle, often hidden from view.

I mean, the whole point of ignorance, attachment and aversion is the idea that, of course, we’re ignorant to it, we don’t see it. It’s hidden from our view unless we really check.

And so there are all kinds of attachment, as I’m sure many of you here are familiar with. There’s attachment to our own opinions, attachment to possessions, to status, to praise and so on. And some of these attachments are easier to work with than others. I often hear people reflect that they say that they can more easily relinquish attachment to possessions, for example, that that’s perhaps an easier one to let go of.

But then attachment in relationships, particularly those in close relationships, it’s quite complex and can really be hidden. And so it shows up in the way that you view the person, of course, but also the way you view other aspects of that relationship. The possessions that you share and the things that you have to organise and your connected relationships. There’s all sorts of things that are connected, but in the person themself, there are two aspects that are broadly talked about.

So you either get the kind of ‘sentimentality’, as Sharon Salzberg calls it, where you just think ‘This person is just great’. You’re really smitten with them. You think this person’s just amazing, and you can’t really see a fault in that moment. You think they’re just so ideal. They’re so perfect. And you just say, ‘I really need this person in my life.’ This is the classic sense of, when we talk about attachment, seeing the person as, ‘This is a cause of my happiness.They just make me so happy’. And ‘I just need to be near them’, right? And so you’re really enamoured with them, consumed by how wonderful they are. And so there’s a clinging and a desire going on there; any and all negatives are filtered out. In that moment, you’re not really seeing realistically, at least while this part is present, that this is not a permanent state. It’s not that you’re always seeing somebody as amazing and great and that they don’t have faults, but there may be periods in which that there is that kind of sense.

And so we’re not even necessarily seeing them as a real person, in a way; you’re seeing them as this wonderful, shiny object of attachment. And so that sentimentality might be there. Sometimes we might recognise that. Sometimes we might recognise it at the start of perhaps new relationships, new friendships or romantic relationships.

I think sometimes after a while of knowing someone, it may not be there so much. You know, we’ve seen too much to believe that they are perfect and amazing and have no flaws. Right? But it can be there, and I’ve certainly witnessed it sometimes in parental relationships I’ve known. Perhaps they see their child as a golden child, even though they might actually be terrorising the other kids at school, but they have this sense that, ‘Not my child. No, they’re too perfect. They’re too this…’ right?

And so we could say that’s that sentimentality: there’s an inability to see any faults or flaws because of this sense of, ‘No, they’re just wonderful’. So this is one aspect, but then there’s another aspect that shows up that perhaps causes even more trouble.

And this we could perhaps call ‘possessiveness’. This is the aspect that has that sense of need: that wants to control or own the other person.This is the part that gets jealous; this is the part that gets possessive; that gets demanding; that gets controlling. ‘This is my cause of happiness’, ‘This person is my cause of happiness and not anyone else’s’.

And the sense that they need to behave how I want them to behave, ‘They need to make me happy’, ‘They need to do this when I ask them to do it’, and ‘They need to look after me like this and they need to do this’ and so on. We have all these conditions of how we expect this person to behave because of how we see them. And so then if they’re not making us happy, if they’re not fulfilling their end of the ‘contractual bargain’ here, then something’s wrong. Attachment is ‘There’s something wrong here’.

And attachment can’t bear change. It wants everything to stay exactly as it was. When everything was great, you know, ‘When you were like this when we met’ and ‘When this and when…’ And it. And it has this sense of not being able to allow people to change and things to shift as they do.

So we might imagine a person who has a close friend that they deeply cherish; it’s a really close friendship, and that friend brings a lot of joy and a lot of comfort to their life. And they’re really close; it’s a really beautiful friendship. Then over time, maybe this person starts to develop this feeling of strong attachment to their friend, which will start to manifest this possessiveness we’re talking about here. Then they might feel uncomfortable if their friend spends time with others or develops new friendships or doesn’t want to spend time with them or gets busy doing other things. They might have this sense that it’s threatening the bond that they have. ‘If they’re not spending time with me, if they’re busy doing other things, they might forget about me,’or ‘They might forget about the good friendship we have’.

So there’s this sense of fear, isn’t there? This sense of uncertainty. And in moments where they feel maybe especially insecure they might demand their friend’s time and attention. They might insist that their friend prioritises the friendship, the relationship. And then if that friend doesn’t respond in the way they expect, if they don’t immediately start checking in and making new plans and messaging them and so on, then they might feel upset, right? They might feel really hurt because inside there’s almost this unconscious sense that ‘my own happiness is contingent upon my friend’s actions, upon whether they’re doing what I need them to do’. ‘They’re a bringer of happiness and joy in my life, and that’s being threatened’. ‘My happiness and joy is being threatened’, So that’s why that hurts: we can’t stand the uncertainty, the lack of control over something that makes us happy.

So this kind of attachment and possessiveness leads to tension in the relationship, doesn’t it? Because that person is going to struggle with things like jealousy and dissatisfaction and disappointment, and they’re going to put that strain on the relationship. They won’t be able to stand that things change. They won’t be able to stand that this person acts in ways that aren’t about ‘me’. Even though that might not be very clear and very obvious, or it might be hidden and even though that may be a very ugly thing to realise.

Then they might try to punish them or test them. We see this kind of thing, right? By either ignoring someone or acting aloof or, ‘Well, I’ll wait for them to show that they care about me’. This kind of testing or punishing behaviour.

So all of this what can look like – and what we call in the West- love. We might just say- if somebody’s like that, somebody’s very possessive or jealous- we might say, ‘They just really love them, you know? They really care about them. They’ve got a lot of strong feelings for them’.

And so we’d call it love, but what it really is, it’s all about ‘me’, isn’t it? It’s all about the ‘I’, ‘I really love them because of how they make me feel’, right? Or ‘I really care about them because of what they mean to me, or because of what impact they have on my life’.

So it’s self referential, isn’t it? And that’s where the pain comes in, because it’s unrealistic. ThIs view of attachment is not in accord with reality because you don’t really control or own a person. Nor are they a cause of happiness or necessary for my well being, or nor is their whole life about us. They’re a person, a real, flawed, imperfectly perfect human being with good sides and bad sides and all sorts of things. So this is that sense of attachment.

But then we have the Buddhist view of love, which we have for our friends, for our loved ones. You know, we don’t just have attachment- we have a mixture, of course. But this kind of genuine love, that we speak of in Buddhism, is not conditional; it’s not restrictive; it’s not claustrophobic – as this attachment is. It’s not dependent on them behaving a certain way. Genuine love doesn’t seek to punish or test someone because they’re not acting the way that we want them to. It says, ‘I love you because I want you to be happy’. And that’s what’s important. ‘I want you to be happy because I see you as someone who, yes, is very precious and worthy of love and worthy of happiness and worthy of well being, and I care about that. I’m invested in your happiness, and I want you to be happy above all else. I don’t want to see you hurting. And if I can help in some way, then I want to’.

So genuine love here, it’s built up of these different words: Loving Kindness, Compassion, tenderness. Genuine love is about them, how you care about them, how you want to benefit them. Genuine love feels spacious and boundless and open, doesn’t it? We’ve all felt it. It feels powerful and strong. It feels freeing and beautiful to love in this way.

And if they don’t reply to your messages or they change over time or they start prioritising other things: this kind of love doesn’t collapse down and then want to punish them or test them or restrict itself because you’re not getting what you want. It still says, ‘I love you and I want you to have what will bring you joy in your life’. Even though that may mean things are changing and things are not the same, and you may be prioritising other things. ‘I still want what will bring you joy’.

And so I think sometimes it’s helpful to remind ourselves. I know a number of us have heard about this love and attachment and we are of course, going to do a day on it in June. But it’s helpful to remind ourselves and reflect upon this, right? And as a starting point, or even kind of a coming back to base point, a good starting point is to try and recognise these two aspects in our relationships, to try and become aware of them. Can we recognise aspects of possessiveness or control or wanting or expectation in our relationships? Can we recognise the sentimentality sometimes?

And when there’s conflict or pain in your relationship, just taking a moment to check ‘Can I recognise here an aspect of attachment firing off or an aspect of attachment not getting what it wants?’

‘Can I see if this pain stems from attachment or not?’ It’s your own mind, it’s your own life, it’s your own relationship. So it’s interesting to say, ‘Well, okay, this pain that’s happening in the relationship, is it coming from attachment or is it coming from somewhere else?’ And really trying to be honest and aware. And then if we do recognise an aspect of attachment getting in the way, causing some issues, we might try to then practice greater love, compassion, tenderness.

You know what? Remind ourselves, ‘What about them?’ You know, maybe there’s that attachment firing off, ‘What about me?’ But then reminding ourselves, ‘What about them? What about their happiness as well?’ Not necessarily at the expense of my own happiness or in a detrimental or harmful way. But what about their happiness as well? It’s not all about me, you know? Because we have to remember that that happiness and contentment that we’ve been seeking all along, that we’ve been hoping will come from them, from their behaviour, their presence. It doesn’t come from outside; it doesn’t come from someone else’s behaviour or presence. The happiness and contentment that we see comes from within.

So those are my ramblings. Before I go too far, as I said, we’re doing a day on it, later in the year. And we really could spend hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks just on this kind of topic.

But I thought it would be helpful – something to reflect upon today.